ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews selected foundational and contemporary scholarship that adopts a sociocultural perspective on literacy learning and learners, and describes how this theoretical perspective has foregrounded the significance of the social and cultural dimensions of reading development. The chapter then reviews selected instructive research emerging from the early 2000’s to the present that describes research on varied socioculturally-informed instructional approaches literacy researchers and teachers have employed to promote students’ reading development and the learning gains and challenges associated with each of these approaches. Approaches reviewed include: a focus on students’ reading identities; choice/independence in student reading; shared texts that invite students’ sociocultural identities and experiences; reading instruction across home, school, and community contexts; and blending sociocultural and cognitive factors in reading instruction. After reviewing the research that draws upon sociocultural theories of reading development, the chapter identifies the major questions that persist in this area. It explores these questions through the framework of the four gaps—implementation, translational, relevance, and bridging—that organize the chapters in this volume and illuminates some pathways as well as challenges for bridging these gaps.
